Proximity effect and -wave superconductivity in -wave superconductor/helimagnet heterostructures
Phys. Rev. B 112, 184515 – Published 18 November, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pmg9-sqyd
Abstract
It is known that in contrast to homogeneous ferromagnetism, helical magnetism is compatible with superconductivity and has only a weak suppressive effect on superconducting critical temperature. Despite this fact, it induces -wave triplet superconducting correlations in homogeneous superconducting systems with intrinsic helical magnetism. The combination of these two facts indicates a high potential for the application of such systems in dissipationless spintronics. For this reason, we investigate the proximity effect in atomically thin superconductor/helical (conical) magnet heterostructures (SC/HM). It is shown that in SC/HM heterostructures, the strength of the proximity effect and, in particular, the amplitude of -wave triplet superconductivity and the degree of superconductivity suppression are complex functions of the magnet exchange field and filling factors of the magnet and the superconductor. Furthermore, we demonstrate that -wave correlations ensure transport spin supercurrent flow in the SC/HM heterostructure with conical magnets, and we unveil the physical relationship between the transport spin supercurrent, the degree of magnet conicity, and the internal structure of -wave correlations in momentum space.